The present invention relates to improvements in electrical connectors of the type having multiple pins or traces and, more particularly, to a connector assembly having an improved filter for filtering electromagnetic signal frequencies to ground.
Conventional multiple pin connectors often require some means for diverting electromagnetic signal frequencies to ground to eliminate interference from such signals. This requirement poses some problems especially where there are numerous pins, such as 25 to 50, carried by a small connector block. In such a case, it is extremely difficult to filter each pin separately from the adjacent pins because of space limitations. Any attempt to do this while keeping space requirements small is extremely difficult. Nonetheless, such filtering must be accomplished in some fashion to assure that proper signal transfer is made through the connector and, at the same time, certain electromagnetic signal frequencies are filtered.
Because of such problems, a need has arisen for an improved electromagnetic interference filter which takes into account all sizes of conventional pin connectors but also requires filtering efficiencies of high quality.
Prior U.S. patents in the filtering of signals on multiple pin connectors include U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,126,480, 4,144,509 and 4,371,226.